Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

Carl Vinson Institute of Government

The University of Georgia

April 2

1814 Henry Lewis Benning was born in Columbia County, Georgia. After graduation from the University of Georgia in 1834, Benning read law in Talbotton before being admitted to the bar in Columbus in 1835. Practicing law, he became both successful and wealthy -- owning over 3,000 acres of land and 89 slaves. After unsuccessful races for the General Assembly and Congress, the legislature elected Benning to the Georgia Supreme Court (1853-59). A strong proponent of states rights, Benning urged Georgia's secession after the election of Lincoln. After the outbreak of the Civil War, Benning raised the 17th Georgia Infantry, in which he was elected colonel in Aug. 1861. Following the battles of Seven Days and Second Manassas, Benning commanded Toombs' brigade and Sharpsburg and Fredericksburg. In January 1863, he was promoted to brigadier general and placed in command of his own brigade in Hood's Division, which fought at Gettysburg, Chickamauga, and Knoxville. In Field's Division, his brigade fought in the Wilderness, Petersburg, and at Appomattox. After the war, Benning resumed the practice of law in Columbus, where he died on July 8, 1875. After the outbreak of World War I, the U.S. Army created a new military post in Columbus and named it Camp Benning in honor of Gen. Benning. In 1922, the camp was redesignated as Fort Benning.

1833 Georgia military governor Gen. Thomas H. Ruger was born in New York. During Reconstruction, Gen. Meade had removed Georgia governor Charles Jenkins. On Jan. 13, 1868, Meade named Gen. Ruger to serve as acting governor of Georgia. Ruger served as chief executive until July 4, 1868, when newly elected Republican governor Rufus Bullock was sworn into office. Ruger then resumed his military career in the U.S. Army. He died June 3, 1907.

1865 The Confederate Government abandoned the Confederacy's capital city of Richmond, Va.

1918 502 German prisoners arrived in Atlanta to be placed in internment camps near Fort McPherson.

1936 A tornado in Cordele killed 23 people and destroyed 289 buildings.

1983 The University of Georgia became the first college to qualify both men's and women's basketball teams to the Final Four in the same year.

1985 Gov. Joe Frank Harris signed a joint resolution of the Georgia General Asembly designating the right whale as the state's official marine mammal.

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1734 From Charles Town, S.C., James Oglethorpe wrote the Trustees on this day:

"The ship with the Salzburgers came in sight and Mr. Von Reck landed here just as I was going to embark for England. I found it necessary to go down to Georgia to place them there and make a disposition for their subsistence. . . . I was, for haste, not able to write to you, because I put out instantly and arrived at Savannah on the 14th of March. I settled the Salzburgers in the situation which they desired, though it occasions an additional expense, we being obliged to buy horses to carry up their provision by land. For they are six miles from the great river [Savannah], and the Ebenezer [River] is so choked up with old trees that boats cannot go 'till they are removed. I therefore hired a packhorseman and have ordered him ten horses to attend them. I have bought a sow, a cow, two fowls, ducks and geese for each of them, which will be delivered as soon as they can be got up. The Commissary [Von Reck] is a good-natured man. The ministers are very devout and the eldest is a very wise man. The whole are a religious, industrious and cheerful people and in all probability will succeed very well."

Source: Mills Lane (ed.). General Oglethorpe Georgia: Colonial Letters, 1733-1743, Vol. I (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1990), pp. 40-41.

1838 From Rossville, Thomas G. MacFarland wrote Gov. George Gilmer about the status of Cherokee Indian removal from Georgia:

". . . As the time for the removal of the Cherokees approaches, their opposition to remove from this country seems to increase. They have not yet commenced planting but still seem to entertain the hope that their delegation in Congress will set aside the treaty of '35 and negotiate another, by which they will be allowed a longer time to remain in this country. No late intelligence has been received from Washington. Very few in this section are enrolling to go West and even those few are postponing the time of their departure. . . . I am still fully of [the] opinion that the great mass of the Nation will depart in peace, but, finding their opposition to removal increasing as the time approaches, I am somewhat fearful that we will have difficulties with some of them before they will leave. . . .

"I would urge upon Your Excellency the necessity of having an additional company raised to be stationed about the county line of Walker and Floyd. They are a considerable number of Cherokees in that neighborhood and some of them very vicious. . . . I believe no persons apprehend difficulty here until force is applied to the Cherokees and even then we hope and believe there will but little difficulty in effecting their removal. But lest we should be unhappily mistaken, we are anxious to get our country well supplied with troops."

Source: Edward J. Cashin (ed.), A Wilderness Still the Cradle of Nature: Frontier Georgia (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1994), p. 232.

1865 After a three-month visit with their older sister on a plantation near Albany, Ga., 24-year-old Eliza Frances Andrews and her younger sister Metta, prepared to return to their parents home in Washington, Ga. As Eliza Andrews recorded in her journal, this was the end of an era:

"Sunday. - I went to church at Mt. Enon. After service we stopped to tell everybody good-by, and I could hardly help crying, for we are to leave sure enough on Tuesday, and there is no telling what may happen before we come back; the Yankees may have put an end to our glorious old plantation life forever. I went to the quarter after dinner and told the negroes good-by. Poor things, I may never see any of them again, and even if I do, everything will be different. We all went to bed crying, sister, the children, and servants. Farewells are serious things in these times, when one never knows where or under what circumstances friends will meet again. I wish there was some way of getting to one place without leaving another where you want to be at the same time; some fourth dimension possibility, by which we might double our personality."

Source: Eliza Frances Andrews, The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl: 1864-1865 (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1908), pp. 127-128.

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© Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia

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